Monday Open Thread; February 19 is Copernicus' Birthday


February 19 is the 50th day of the year, there are 315 days left
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Today's number is 19

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19 is a prime number (the eighth prime)
The only magic hexagon with more than 1 cell has 19 cells
19 is potassium
The metonic cycle is roughly 19 years and pops up in calendars throughout history; 19 years = 235 lunar months
A zero point hand in cribbage is called "nineteen" because no cribbage hand can have a 19 point score
The 19th hole on a golf course is the bar
A go board is a 19 x 19 grid

Title 19 of the US Code is CUSTOMS DUTIES

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19 BCE
was the Year of the Consulship of Saturninus and Vespillo
The Aqua Virgo was completed
The poet Virgil died

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19 CE
was the Year of the Consulship of Silanus and Balbus
Germanicus Julius Caesar died
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On this day in:

0356 -- Emperor Constantius II decreed the closing of all pagan temples in the Empire. *
1674 -- The Treaty of Westminster, ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War. **
1878 -- Thomas Edison patented the phonograph.
1942 -- FDR signed executive order 9066, allowing the forced internment of Japanese Americans
1943 -- The Battle of Kasserine Pass began
1945 -- The US Marines landed on Iwo Jima.
1949 -- Ezra Pound was awarded the first Bollingen Prize in poetry
1953 -- Georgia approved the US' first literature censorship board
1954 -- The Soviet Politburo transferred the Crimean Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
1963 -- Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" was published
1976 -- Gerald Ford rescinded FDR's Executive Order 9066 ***

* Leading to centuries of intellectual, behavioral, and occupational tyranny, the shadow and stink of which still permeates our lives

** It also transferred the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam (to be renamed New York) to England.

*** Truman, Ike, JFK, LBJ, and Nixon couldn't be bothered.

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Born this day in:

1473 -- Nicolaus Copernicus, heretical mathematician and astronomer
1743 -- Luigi Boccherini, Italian cellist and composer
1904 -- Elisabeth Welch, singer and actress
1936 -- Sam Myers, singer and songwrite
1940 -- Smokey Robinson, singer, songwriter, and producer
1940 -- Bobby Rogers, singer, songwriter, and miracle
1946 -- Karen Silkwood, technician and activist
1948 -- Mark Andes, singer, songwriter, and bassist
1949 -- Eddie Hardin, singer, songwriter, and pianist
1952 -- Amy Tan, author

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Died this day in:

1916 -- Ernst Mach, physicist and philosopher
1972 -- Lee Morgan, trumpet player and composer
2003 -- Johnny Paycheck, singer, songwriter and guitarist
2016 -- Harper Lee, author
2017 -- Larry Coryell, jazz guitarist

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Holidays, Holy Days, Festivals, Feast Days and such:
Roll your own

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So, for music,
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Nicolaus Copernicus

Luigi Boccherini

Elisabeth Welch

Sam Meyers

Smokey Robinson & Bobby Rogers

Lee Morgan

Johnny Paycheck

Larry Coryell


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picture is "Image from page 135 of "Science and literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" (1878)"

It's an open thread, so do your thing

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They are doing some 40th anniversary shows. Worth seeing if you get a chance. The special appearance by "Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers" was worth the price of admission alone.

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@jbob

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enhydra lutris's picture

@jbob
Makes it easier to get going.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

enhydra lutris's picture

@jbob @jbob

Red Knuckles and the Trailblazers sounds like a fun group.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

enhydra lutris's picture

@The Aspie Corner
countering the steady drumbeat of US propaganda. The more that it continues and consumes ever more of the media and information space, the more obvious it is that it has been a major and very insidious force for my entire life. The big stuff was always noticeable, but the all pervasiveness wasn't, though now, in retrospect, it was there all the same.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

The Aspie Corner's picture

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

enhydra lutris's picture

@The Aspie Corner
the matter. The Dems had power and did zip shit (just as in so many other issue areas).

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

The Aspie Corner's picture

@enhydra lutris we didn't even get a 'Public Option' and the Repigs pulled a Taft-Hartley on Medicaid expansion via the rigged Supreme Court. Thank you very much Voldemort and 'Conservatives' for 'Patient Rights'.

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

jobu's picture

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enhydra lutris's picture

@jobu
that to all future "19" columns.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Lookout's picture

and a happy b'day to Copernicus. the revolutionary that suggested the Earth was revolving around the sun. His fate was better than Galileo's.

The refusal to accept science and evidence is still with us. I had to revisit the story...

Copernicus received a Frombork canon cathedral appointment, holding onto the job for the rest of his life. It was a fortunate stroke: The canon's position afforded him the opportunity to fund the continuation of his studies for as long as he liked.

At the University of Bologna, he met astronomer Domenico Maria Novara—a fateful encounter, as the two began exchanging astronomical ideas and observations, ultimately becoming housemates. Historian Edward Rosen described the relationship as follows: "In establishing close contact with Novara, Copernicus met, perhaps for the first time in his life, a mind that dared to challenge the authority of [astrologist Claudius Ptolemy] the most eminent ancient writer in his chosen fields of study."

Scholars believe that by around 1508, Copernicus had begun developing his own celestial model, a heliocentric planetary system, which places the sun, rather than the earth, as the center of the solar system. He wasn't the first to suggest the idea, in the third century B.C., ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos had identified the sun as a central unit orbited by a revolving earth. But a heliocentric theory was dismissed in Copernicus's era because Ptolemy's ideas were far more accepted by the influential Roman Catholic Church.

Around 1514, Copernicus completed a written work, Commentariolus (Latin for "Small Commentary"), a 40-page manuscript which summarized his heliocentric planetary system and alluded to forthcoming mathematical formulas meant to serve as proof. Copernicus's theories incensed the Roman Catholic Church and was considered heretical. Martin Luther voiced his opposition to the heliocentric solar system model. His underling, Lutheran minister Andreas Osiander, quickly followed suit, saying of Copernicus, "This fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside down."

Suffering the aftermath of a stroke, Copernicus was said to have been clutching his book, De revolutionibus orbium coelestium ("On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres"), when he died in his bed on May 24, 1543 in Frombork, Poland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus

The man that made us realize every year is a revolution!

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

enhydra lutris's picture

@Lookout
the year of the dog. In the west, and most especiallt the US, every year is the year of the dogma.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

CB's picture

@Lookout
Even more astonishing than that, most Americans believe they are communicating with actual people on the internet. The reality is the internet is a gigantic psych-op engineered by Alien beings performing an experiment to test if humanoids exhibit intelligent behavior. There have been rumors that funding may be discontinued due to disappointing results.

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Pluto's Republic's picture

@CB

People are so disappointed when you tell them when they are on the Internet, they are actually looking at cache files located on their own hard drives. That their monitor is not a window on a "place" where there are people and things gathered together.

But, I'm wondering, what is the harm in thinking the sun revolves around the earth? It sure looks that way. Why confuse them and make them feel uncomfortable? We should let the A.I.s decide how to handle TMI.

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hecate's picture

Actually Copernicus didn't think the earth revolved around the sun, he thought it revolved around a "center" that was nearby, but was not the sun itself. The Greek astronomer Aristarchus came closer, in stating the earth rotates 360 degrees a day, and orbits the sun. The Pythagoreans were also correct, in that Pythagorean way, in knowing the earth revolves around a central fire that isn't really the sun—it is, instead, desire.

My favorite lines about Pound:

praise be to nero's neptune
the titanic sails at dawn
and everybody's shouting
"which side are you on?"
and ezra pound and t.s. eliot
fighting in the captain's tower
while calpyso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers

The land the Dutch boringly named New Amsterdam has always been cursed. Which is why the Lenape were content to let it go for a handful of beads. But planetbeneath18.jpgneither they, the purchasing Dutch, nor even H. P. Lovecraft, could conceive that it would one day prove such a hellpit it would belch forth the most hideous beast in all creation. But it did. Which is why, in the fullness of time, it shall be drained of all its human inhabitants. They will leave in a long and winding stream of refugees: possessions piled high on wooden carts; strapped firmly to their backs. As behind them officials of the Department Of Shame set about demolishing the entirety of the city. All works therein of human hands shall be ground into dust. The city shall be returned to the wild, and it will stay that way. The only human-crafted object to remain shall be a small plaque containing the words of The Hairball’s mother: “What kind of son have I created?” Forever shall it stand as an otherwise mute monument, to What Can Happen.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@hecate For co-orbiting bodies, it is the center of mass of the system. For our solar system, that point is within the sun, but not at its exact center, and it too is in motion.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

CB's picture

@enhydra lutris
A lot of Copernicus's arithmetic has now been debunked by further scientific research and common sense.

[video:www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ_wsSXL_PA]

Short documentary 'IN SEARCH OF THE EDGE' (1990) is a comprehensive inquiry into the shape of the Earth and the disappearance of Andrea Barns. A lesson in critical thinking and media literacy proving, fairly conclusively, that the earth is flat, while dismissing the "global earth" doctrine as little more than an elaborate hoax.
...
"Well done in all respects...should be well received in science classrooms. It will hold students' interest and provoke some lively discussion. Teachers wishing to enliven Earth science classes will find the program useful...recommended for purchase." - Video Rating Guide for Libraries.

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smiley7's picture

@hecate
praise be to nero's neptune
the titanic sails at dawn
and everybody's shouting
"which side are you on?"
and ezra pound and t.s. eliot
fighting in the captain's tower
while calpyso singers laugh at them
and fishermen hold flowers

Smile

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7

And nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

@enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris

in need of this today.

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7
buddha2

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

Pluto's Republic's picture

...that appeared here, yesterday, regarding the latest proxy indictments by Mueller. It seems there was some strange attempt to spam references to it on Twitter. So the MoA folks did a bit of forensics, only to discover this:

[Update - 12:50 EST]

Commentators pointed out:

1. The first retweet shown above, which introduced the 'fish' line, is from a real person. Debbie Lusigman, the @saneprogessive, who has her own video channel with lots of legit content. The other tweets though are copies (not regular retweets) of the first retweet.
(h/t oldandyoung and integer)

2. The other personalities are likely bots that may well be run by one Scott Dworkin, a grifter who runs the fundraising campaign Democratic Coalition and channels most of the funds to a company he owns. Geoff Miami found the connection and reported on it at Progressive Army.
(h/t Demeter)

Posted by b on February 19, 2018

You can read the details, here:

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2018/02/internet-marketing-why-is-the-fish-...

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CB's picture

@Pluto's Republic

cat sock puppet.jpg

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enhydra lutris's picture

@Pluto's Republic

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

smiley7's picture

thanks for the OT and spawning fun comments; plus this is how i feel after President's Day holiday on the slopes watching the man take all the money at we worker's expense:

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enhydra lutris's picture

@smiley7 the day.

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --